Image by Thomas Leuthard, shared under a Creative Commons Licence
1. Knowing that you could not exist without the arts, but the arts could exist without you on some level.
2. The realisation that you are only ever as good as our last piece, and that last article you wrote wasn’t so great.
3. Finding out what you will only ever be as good as another arts journalist’s last piece, and they really fucked up on that one.
4. The assumption that your words have killed dreams/careers/films/plays/bands stone dead.
5. The constant fear that your words have, in fact, ended the career of a promising director/actor/playwright/writer/musician.
6. The never-ending misunderstandings about what it is that you actually write about, because the umbrella term ‘the arts’ means different things to different people.
For example, if you were to mention that you’re an arts journalist in public, the chances are that somebody in the vicinity will demand your opinion on their latest painting or exhibition, which leads to an awkward conversation where you have to explain that you don’t actually review ‘visual art’, or whatever it is that they do, and that if they’d let you finish your bloody sentence then this awkward conversation would never have happened.
(Obviously, being polite, you will never say the last part of that sentence out loud, but you’ll be screaming it inside your head. Repeatedly. With lots of swear words.)
7. Knowing that you can’t always review the things that you want to, due to time, money and editorial pressure. This will sometimes lead to only the big films/plays/bands getting written about, which is neither right nor fair.
8. Downright cynicism. About everything. Ever.
9. Genuine hunger for the arts being replaced by genuine hunger for food, because you don’t have any money left after paying your bills, thanks to your meagre earnings.
10. The comments on our reviews/previews/articles. The horror. The horror.
11. Juggling your arts journalism work with another job. Sometimes two other jobs.
12. Exhaustion from having 2 or more jobs.
13. Frustration from having far too many jobs and not enough time to dedicate to arts journalism.
14. Knowing, that by not being able to spend enough time on your arts journalism work, that you are disappointing people, including yourself.
15. That nagging sensation that what you do isn’t actually journalism at all and is probably more like PR. An inkling that isn’t helped by this famous quote from George Orwell.
16. The realisation that you will never be able to write as well as George Orwell, and that he probably wouldn’t have liked you very much, anyway.
17. Finding out that a potential writing opportunity is unpaid, but will be great for your portfolio/exposure/experience, according to the editor, who gets paid to get people to work for free.
18. Knowing that your bank will not actually take payment in the form of exposure in lieu of actual cash, even though you assured them that said exposure could lead to paid work “…in the future”.
19. Seeing that other, inexperienced writers will take that unpaid work, thus enabling those companies that can and should pay their workers get away with not paying them.
20. Repeatedly and mysteriously dropping off press distribution lists, which means that you have to sign up to the same press distribution list every few months.
21. Missing exclusives and other important news because you are no longer on said press distribution list for some reason.
22. Being added to distribution lists that you most certainly didn’t sign up to, because someone got hold of your email address.
23. Receiving a badly written, poorly researched and completely unsuitable PR from a PR company, and knowing that the person that wrote it makes at least twice your yearly salary.
24. Your publication running out of budget.
25. Your publication running out of space, because they have to sell more ads now.
The Taylor Trash 
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